The video clip above is from an interview with prolific designer and creative director of Louis Vuitton, Marc Jacobs, just before the unveiling of Louis Vuitton’s SS12 collection.
In the video Mr. Jacobs stresses the importance of consistency in design - to maintain a fixed set of values or qualities in each collection regardless of the inevitable change that each season in fashion brings. As Mr. Jacobs states:
“The nature of fashion is to change each season[…]but within that change trying to create, overtime, a consistent idea of who the Louis Vuitton woman is, regardless of the changes of fashion.”
From a business perspective, Mr. Jacobs highlighted two very important marketing and branding components to the business of fashion:
1. Designing with your target audience in mind. It is essential to know and identify your ideal target audience, and then design your product, service, or experience to align with their core values. And to identify the values of your target audience, it helps to understand the ‘meme’ resident within their ‘tribe’ or social community. One of the best ways to start understanding the meme, according to Stuart Diamond [@stuart_diamond], Pulitzer winning journalist and communications expert, begins with the understanding of the “pictures” your target audience hold inside their heads.
2. Consistency in your message. In fashion, I believe each collection is implicitly communicating the core values of the brand to the target audience. And one of the most fundamental components of branding is consistency in the brand’s message over all touchpoints relevant to the brand’s target audience. Thus, in each fashion collection, “overtime,” a target audience should be able to identify consistent themes or values from a brand, regardless of seasonal changes from current trends. This is a concept that was further elaborated on by Mr. Jacobs, stating he prefers “evolution rather than revolution” in regards to designing each new collection. This makes perfect sense since evolution is a gradual change overtime, while maintaining certain inherited traits that are passed along to, and remain consistent with, each new generation or “collection,” in this particular case.
To learn more about some of the important marketing and branding components in the business of fashion, read Can Anyone Become A Brand? and Why Every Brand Needs An Ultimate Consumer.
Click on the video above to hear more from Mr. Jacobs. Happy Watching!
posted by Kwasi Gyasi via Jey Van Sharp of MyUberLife
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